What exactly does a CRM system mean and what is its function?

What is customer relationship management software? What does CRM mean to businesses? Why should your business care about and use CRM? We answer all these questions and show you how a CRM can help your business, aligning with sales, marketing and customer service departments? By putting your customers first, you can break through the bottlenecks of business growth and become a cool customer-centric company. The following content will explain that CRM is not just a technology, but also includes the application of management concepts. When you successfully implement CRM, CRM will help you build better customer relationships, increase company revenue, and create excellent customer experiences.

1. What is CRM?

You may have heard the acronym CRM before - Customer Relationship Management. You know “C” stands for Customer, so, what is Customer Relationship Management? CRM is a company-wide business strategy designed to increase revenue and profitability, reduce costs and increase customer loyalty. The philosophy of CRM is simple: put the customer first. When businesses view every transaction through the eyes of their customers, they will be compelled to provide a better customer experience, which in turn increases customer loyalty to the company.

Excellent CRM software brings together all the information from different departments of the company to give an overall view of each customer in real time. This allows sales staff to upgrade their sales skills, conduct precise sales and cross-sells, while improving the quality and responsiveness of their communication with customers. Managers can coordinate various factors such as sales and marketing management to make quick and wise decisions. decision. When you successfully implement a CRM, you not only gain insight into the opportunities to grow business with each customer, but CRM also provides a way to measure their value.

If you think the above statement is too obscure, we recommend you read the following easy article, which can help you master CRM in ten minutes.

How to understand the CRM customer relationship management system - Dingole’s answer

2. What is the main role of CRM in enterprises?

CRM is more important than ever for your business because it can help you acquire new customers and retain existing ones. CRM helps you get your sales and marketing efforts right, allowing your company to better understand customers and their preferences and needs in order to improve the way you deliver products to them (sales process optimization and sales methods). The better you understand your customers and their buying preferences and behaviors, the more likely you are to hit your goals.

The CRM market is still developing. As a 2017 Gartner report found, CRM software revenue has surpassed database management systems and accounts for the largest share of the software market.

Has your company encountered the following problems? If so, that is why CRM is important to your business.

In today's highly competitive market environment, with so many products and services to choose from, customers have become picky and customer loyalty seems to be a thing of the past.

You find that you cannot use one model to please all your customers, even though they all buy your same product.

Although some customers consume very little, they are a burden to the service team.

Competitors of your size often steal your business.

The sales process often goes wrong, the closing rate is getting lower and lower, and the sales staff begin to complain.

There are more...

3. How does the CRM system work?

Although some people think that CRM is just a technology, it is much more than that. If it is just technology, no matter how complex it is, it will not be able to play any role without a corporate strategy to guide its implementation and application. Enterprise strategy and technology must work together to achieve customer-centric initiatives. Let’s look at the role of CRM in customer centricity, customer data and automation.

1. Support a customer-centric strategy

CRM systems support a strategy where the customer is at the center of everything you do. This customer-centric strategy must be based on clear goals and meaningful customer experiences as the vision of the business.

According to Gartner's "Improving Customer Experience" report, valuable customer experience is an integral part of CRM. Whenever a customer comes into contact with a business through any channel, the customer has the opportunity to form their own opinion—whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent. Over time, the collection of these customer experiences creates a picture in the customer's mind, forming an image of the brand's values.

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Those companies that take CRM design and maintaining high-quality customer experience seriously will always recognize that a poor customer experience will It is the first step in losing customers, and valuing customer loyalty is an iron rule of business.

2. Centralize all customer data

CRM software combines all sales, marketing, and customer service information into a central database. Enterprises centralize customer data and provide unified access to all data in a database—the first step toward customer centricity. Customer information includes, but is not limited to, phone numbers, addresses, and contact records. The CRM also records detailed communication content, next follow-up date, and the customer's current status and all historical data. This information may be used to conduct customer-related marketing, sales and customer service activities.

Overall, a CRM database provides the foundation for building customer loyalty and a better customer experience. Since the CRM system centralizes all customer-facing information, customer information opacity is significantly reduced. Sales can't blame marketing for not communicating with them, marketing can't blame sales for not implementing their activities, and customer service can't blame sales for not having a good handover.

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The entire business process starts with the basic information of the customer. Once the customer data is imported into the system, it is equivalent to The customer is brought into the sales process. CRM will assign the customer to the salesperson based on the rules and remind the salesperson to call at the agreed time. Every time a salesperson interacts with a customer, it is logged into the CRM system.

In short, CRM tracks all customer-related actions and things said and done. You get an instant, automated communication trail before an interaction with a customer begins. Because the information is in one central location, everyone else in the company can help you make the next contact.

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3. Automate customer-oriented business processes

Does your company have business-oriented processes and Customer-facing processes. Business-oriented processes are those that make the business run more efficiently, such as budgeting and planning, while customer-oriented processes include sales, marketing, and customer service.

Whether you are in sales, marketing, or customer support, a CRM system can help you automate your business processes and customize the way each process stage works with each other. However, it goes without saying that every business process must be well defined and efficient in order for the company to achieve good results.

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Customer-facing process management should have clear rules. These rules define whether a request goes to department A or department B, what resources should be used to solve the customer's problem, and how to drive the execution of the process to ensure that the problem is solved. Once workflows and rules are defined, a CRM system can automate the entire process. At the same time, CRM also automatically records process historical data and communication processes so that customer service teams can review the information to better understand how to help customers, ultimately improving customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Customer-centricity has become an important strategy for most companies to gain profits. CRM software is just what it sounds like, it helps companies build better customer relationships. . What customers really want is personalized service and the value you can provide them. Customers who have a sense of value for your products are satisfied customers, and satisfied customers mean word-of-mouth and repeat business, and this is why CRM Reasons that are important to the business.